This helps me to understand what's going on. People think of online games in different ways.
Some people think of an online world as a world where they can be annoying to people (I'm putting it mildly) "just because". Perhaps they think of it as part of gameplay - taunting someone in a pick up sports game. Perhaps they would like to be a jerk to everyone they meet on a city street, and they can't.
Some of us think of an online world as walking down a path in a public space, albeit a public space with interesting quests and monsters, and things to find and do! I don't expect the people I meet in a public space to go out of their way to to harrass me, to get ahead at my expense, or to try to steal from me. That's my world, my environment, how I look at it.
If the world and the game is interesting enough, I'll put up with some level of irritation, but it's never my preference. You call it "carebear" - I call it following the same civility and care that I expect in my real life, when I'm in a public or semi-public space. I think this means several things - looking at ways to make it harder to grief (changing the design, fixing bugs), and enforcing what it means to be on a PvE server - you don't get to grief other people. I don't want anyone to make a spectacle of griefers, but I want them out of my play area. Don't fill my PvE space with people and gameplay that is really PvP.
I can't speak for PvP, but it seems to me that PvP might be more enjoyable if there was a way to make it fair, a real contest, not someone beating on a lower lever character, because they can. I'd be interested in reading about experience where PvP was played "fair". Brutos, several posts previous to mine, had some great comments on how to keep PvP fair in an fps game.
Some people think of an online world as a world where they can be annoying to people (I'm putting it mildly) "just because". Perhaps they think of it as part of gameplay - taunting someone in a pick up sports game. Perhaps they would like to be a jerk to everyone they meet on a city street, and they can't.
Some of us think of an online world as walking down a path in a public space, albeit a public space with interesting quests and monsters, and things to find and do! I don't expect the people I meet in a public space to go out of their way to to harrass me, to get ahead at my expense, or to try to steal from me. That's my world, my environment, how I look at it.
If the world and the game is interesting enough, I'll put up with some level of irritation, but it's never my preference. You call it "carebear" - I call it following the same civility and care that I expect in my real life, when I'm in a public or semi-public space. I think this means several things - looking at ways to make it harder to grief (changing the design, fixing bugs), and enforcing what it means to be on a PvE server - you don't get to grief other people. I don't want anyone to make a spectacle of griefers, but I want them out of my play area. Don't fill my PvE space with people and gameplay that is really PvP.
I can't speak for PvP, but it seems to me that PvP might be more enjoyable if there was a way to make it fair, a real contest, not someone beating on a lower lever character, because they can. I'd be interested in reading about experience where PvP was played "fair". Brutos, several posts previous to mine, had some great comments on how to keep PvP fair in an fps game.
Griefing happens, you deal with it. Or you partake in it.
